Other Sites
Provides: Recovery of deleted files
Developer: Prosoft Engineering
Requirements: Mac OS X v10.2 or greater and use of HFS+ (default OS X setting)
Retail Price: $49.00 stand-alone, $149.00 as part of Data Safety Suite
Version: 1.3.1
Everyone who's ever used a computer has at least once thrown something away that they later realized shouldn't have been discarded. Data Recycler can successfully recover your deleted files very easily—just please read how to do it from this review, not from the manual.
First off, let me explain what happens when you create, and then later delete a file. As you create or place new files, new applications, new whatever on your hard drive, the links to these files are placed on a main directory. The links not only let the computer know where a file is on the hard drive, but which sectors (areas of allocated space) on the hard drive are being used by the file. A sector can only hold data for one file, so when that sector is in use, the directory knows this and prevents any other data from being written to that directory. When you delete a file, all you are doing is removing the links and allocation control from the directory. Once that sector has been identified as being available for new data, the directory lets new data write over the old data. Think of this like recording casettes. If you have a tape of music and have the name of the music on the casette, you know not to record over the current music. However, if you remove the label off the casette, the contents of the tape are likely to be erased by newer music. Similarly, once the computer places other files in the same sectors where the deleted file used to be, the old file is considered "overwritten" and is now unrecoverable.
Before being overwritten, the file's information is still on your hard drive and can be found if you can search for the data within the document (as opposed to the file's name). Norton Utilities can do this now, but Semantic has dropped NU for future Mac versions (after X.3) and TechTool dropped file recovery support for deleted files. To compound the problem for recovery of deleted files, in OS X, applications often contain hundreds if not thousands of separate files. Thus, if you were to delete some documents and upgrade some large programs (for example, any Adobe or Microsoft programs), you would have to search through thousands of files looking for your tossed document.
Probably the best personal approach to file handling I've ever heard was from a friend who creates a folder for every week on his desktop and places them near his trash can. He places all documents intended for the trash into these folders and if after one week he still doesn't need the material he's tossed in that week's folder, he tosses the folder out. Despite this very organized approach, he still admits to occasionally discovering that he shouldn't have tossed a file.
As they say, "please save me from myself..."
That's where Data Recycler comes in.
When you start Data Recycler, you are presented with the fairly straightforward DR window:
There are three main sections to this window:
- the top section where you choose the drive you wish to monitor,
- the middle section that displays your settings,
- The bottom section where you can recover tossed files.
Chose the drive:
Whatever drives you have mounted can be selected from the drop-down menu. The only caveat is that the drive must be set to HFS+ (Versioned or non-Versioned are both okay). Any other formatting will prevent DR from functioning.
Settings:
Data Recycler doesn't use the standard preference found underneath the name of the program's menu selection. In fact, if you go to the program's menu and look for Preferences, you'll find it grayed out. The preferences For Data Recycler are set in the "Edit Options..." found in the bottom right part of this middle section.
While my first reaction was a dislike from veering from Mac standards for placement of the preferences, upon later reflection, this is not really bad. With this interface, one can easily select from which drive one is trying to recover data and easily see what that settings are from that drive. There are very few preferences, and what there are are always visible. When you select the "Edit Options..." you get the following sheet:
I'm fairly certain the EWS (Early Warning System) is also known as SMART technology (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology), but I could find nothing to verify this. Regardless, this is a function of the drive that can be read (or ignored) by the software and warns you of hard drive irregularities, implying potential failure of the hard drive.
In the middle, you establish a protected region for your deleted files. This is the heart of how Data Recycler works. Generally, a default 10% of your hard drive space becomes protected. As stated before, all your files can be recovered until the file is overwritten. The 10% of your drive that is protected will not be used by the hard drive when writing files and thereby prevents overwriting of the files. As your file deletion continues and exceeds that 10% of the space, the older files are kicked out of this protected space allowing for more recent file trashing. It is from this contained, protected region where all file recovery is performed.
Before I explain the bottom region, I have to backtrack a bit and explain one other feature provided with Data Recycler. When installing DR, you will find that you actually receive two programs: the Data Recycler program itself and an extra program called "Data Recycler Express Shredder" (DRES). The latter program causes immediate deletion of the document from the directory, done outside of the 10% protected cache. It also performs one of three types of over-writing of the file's data on the hard drive. When using the Data Recycler Express Shredder, there is no going back.
The reason for this option is obvious if you read the newspapers. There are times when you really, really, really want to trash a file and really, really, really do not want anyone to find any trace of that file on your hard drive. Think of Ollie North or Enron and you see where I'm going. Normal deletion of files means that most, if not all of your file may be recoverable on your hard drive. Use of Data Recycler insures that all deleted files will be recoverable. Data Recycler Express Shredder provides three levels of overwriting to insure that the actual data on the hard drive has been completely overwritten and is completely unrecoverable.
My one complaint with DRES is that the installer places the program itself at the lower right corner of your desktop. What I feel the installer should do is place the program itself in the Data Recycler's folder (in the Applications folder) and place an alias of the application on the desktop. That was the first thing I did when I realized the original placement.
For Data Recycler to function, you have to install and enter your serial number. From that point on, files placed in the trash are recoverable. Any files placed in the trash prior to installing Data Recycler can be considered gone.
To use Data Recycler, as seen on the bottom of the very top image, there are two locations for recovering data: the System and the Trash. The System option is because (from what I could gather from the limited manual) OS X deletes files separate from files tossed in the trash can. If you know what you are looking for, you can recover them as well. The Trash option is the one that most users will use to search for lost treasures. By tipping-the-triangle, all the files you had deleted (a) since installing Data Recycler and (b) hadn't been subsequently removed from the Data Recycler's cache due to copious trashing of "stuff" will be waiting for recovery. At this point, all one does is click on the "Undelete" button and find the item in an Undeleted #1 (etc.) folder on your desktop. Within the first folder, you will find a Trash folder. Within that is the entire "tree" of folder(s) that contained the original file. As opposed to older file recovery programs, you do not have to recover the items on a different drive, and you do not have to worry about overwriting the data because the data is already protected.
If you do not wish to scroll down and look for items to recover, you can search for them and there are options to refine the search. By clicking on the "Custom..." button as illustrated in the window below, you can look for items by name, date, or size. The Contains option is part of "Starts with...," "Ends with...," and "is." See below.
One of the potential problems with Data Recycler is that when you are trashing programs, especially large multi-component programs like the Microsoft Office or the Adobe Suite. These programs can install 350 MB to almost 1.5 GB of "stuff." As such, it might be all too easy to push data out of the Data Recycler cache earlier than you may appreciate. An easy solution is to trash old programs not into the trash can, but rather into the Data Recycler Express Shredder. Items sent to this abyss do not affect documents placed in the trash.
There was one aspect of Data Recycler I didn't like, and that is the icon. While I have no problem with the actual design, I do have a small problem with the way it was created. The three triangles have an empty space in the middle. Because of that empty space, you can't double-click the center of the icon to start the program. You have to double-click directly on any of the green arrows, I found the best luck on the bottom right part of the icon.
Another disappointment with Data Recycler is the fact that ProSoft does not account for the extra hard drive space it uses with the Data Backup program. This problem is fully discussed in the forthcoming Data Rescue review.
Else wise, I found this program quite nice and that it, for the most part, did no harm. It does what it's supposed to do, and it didn't get in my way. To be honest, I almost never wish to recover things that I throw out, but perhaps that's because I know how challenging it could be to recover them before Data Recycler. Perhaps now I will find myself thinking, "Oh wait, I needed that!" more often just because I can (and easily can).
Applelinks Rating
___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.
Tags: Reviews ď Utilities Reviews ď
